My next step was to build a birch and spruce farm. I had a jungle nearby, so I didn't feel like setting up a jungle tree farm. I picked a nearby hill and did a ton of terraforming to get a level space to work on. After that, I began working on my new shop. The ground floor was simple: all things wood. Saplings, logs, and wood planks were soon in place. For the second floor, I offered a variety of foods. I even put together a chicken farm and was able to offer raw and cooked chicken, as well as feathers.
Shortly after that, I found my resources dwindling as another farmer began selling his goods into my shop. He was helping make sure I would be well stocked, with no effort on my part. I believe in buying and selling at the same price. Producers profit fairly, and don't have an incentive to undercut me on prices. I get the relief of not having to work as hard to keep inventory stocked, as others began buying. With my choice of location, I was basically setting the economy for these products in this world.
The big news, however, was that there would be a new high god from among us. Many were ineligible, for various reasons, but it was a source of great excitement. I had to admit, I found the idea intriguing, but couldn't imagine what kinds of great responsibilities would be involved in being responsible for sustaining a world. Since I did appear to be eligible, I inquired about the responsibilities.
Just as I was finishing my initial work on the shop, there was an alarm. Our resident chicken guardian had an explosion of chickens in her sanctuary. Someone had bred them to a ridiculous level. When she opened the door to get in, they instead escaped. The result was a massive chicken hunt that extended into night, with zombies, skeletons, creepers, and spiders confusing things further.
Soon, I found myself conversing with the inheritor of HermitCats again. She wasn't happy being basically alone in the old faction, and wanted me to return as leader. I, on the other hand, was quite happy being functionally alone, with one of the gods joined with me in the distance. When she expressed concern for how I'd given up so many resources, I finally consented to show her the reality.
The new farm was already larger than the old one, to her amazement. The tree farms were much the same, and chickens were also more numerous. I was willing to let her remerge with me, with the old base as her private home, but I simply wasn't interested in building a community again. I needed space for my projects, and I wanted to build them as I saw fit.
The one thing that stunner her more than anything else was my home: a tiny room full of chests and furnaces. At first, she thought I was kidding when I told her it was my home. It took a bit for her to realize I was completely serious. The reality was that she is a social person, and likes to do group projects. By contrast, I am friendly, but not overly social.
During all this, the god that had joined my faction was happily harvesting and replanting supplies for his own base, which was exactly the sort of cooperation I actually enjoy. He was respectful of the parameters of the base, while he prepared to create his own farm to meet his needs.
I soon found myself with a second god in my faction. This one tucked himself into a little island and used his powers to craft a homey den for himself. Meanwhile, I found myself running into a rather simple issue: I wanted to start making larger structures, and they would require sticky pistons.
For that, I needed slimes. I started digging around while using sensors to detect the right conditions for slimes to appear underground. Soon I had found a suitable location, and I began creating a tiered system that would allow me to harvest as many as I needed. It didn't work very well, but that was because I had tons of caverns unlit around it. I then spent days exploring them and lighting them with torches.
At some point, I decided I wanted to start selling other animal products than chickens. I sidetracked myself a little bit and created deep pens for cows, pigs, and sixteen pens for sheep. It didn't take long to have all of them filled, and the sheep color coded by pen. Did I mention the stupid sheep breed true to whatever you dye them? Think about that for a moment. Dye a couple sheep pink, and they have pink babies.
I had just finished that, when one of the demigods and his friends began a massive rampage on another faction. I was far away from it, thankfully, but it was... horrible. With a demigod backing them, but doing none of the work, the much larger faction was being decimated despite all their efforts to survive. Land was stolen, property destroyed, and all I could do was sit back and listen to the screams of anguish and glee through my telepathy.
It was the first time that I truly, truly wished I was one of the gods. I had no doubt the weapons being used were being artificially created. I had no doubt this was slaughter of the most unjust sort. And I could do nothing. Finally, one of the gods appeared and put an end to it, but it had been truly frightening.
With things finally calm, I could return to my new problem: I didn't have enough wheat capacity. Between cows and sheep, I simply wasn't growing wheat fast enough to feed them regularly. I built a massive bed about the same size as my existing farm just for wheat. I'd been saving up my seeds, and ran out at the half-way mark of the initial planting!
I continued with a few other, minor things. I worked with one of the gods to get a nether road set up to connect our bases. Then I started terraforming the extreme hill I was in to build up a massive platform for my oak tree farm. My goal was to checkerboard it with glowstone, but I didn't have the glowstone for that, yet.
During all that, one of the gods who had previously been banned was caught breaking into someone's locked chests. Soon there were accusations of stolen diamonds, and a huge furor arose. Once again, I found myself wondering what was REALLY going on, and had no way to investigate. Something was fishy in our world, and I hoped it would be resolved soon.